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2015 films preview

From animations 10 years in the making to comedies shot in 3 days , 2015 brings a bigger range of films than ever. But the real questions is, how many of their minutes are solid?

An incomplete list of films distributed in 2015 announced so far by the big five, which covers over half of the distribution market share in China.

I ignored a couple that had little to no information on story/production/cast and/or children’s films that you probably don’t care about.

Angelababy, Bai Baihe, Lin Gengxin, Jing Boran, and Amber Kuo seem to be the breakout young actors among the list. Adaptations are even more popular, especially in the youth category, with two competing film versions of My Sunshine alone. While popular series like Tiny Times 4.0 continues, we also see the beginning of four new series – Zhong Kui, The Ghouls, The Lost Tombs, and the first major animation-live action film Monster Hunt. I was the most excited by animation Big Fish, one of an increasing number of animations for older audiences, finally finding a distributor.

Is it normal to make variety/reality shows into movies? I remember a while back they made a Where Are We Going, Dad? movie. I wonder what the format is like, because I can not imagine a Kim Kardashians movie *cringe*

But the Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus “documentary” movies all did really well. ;b

I think in general, people just like to make whatever they think can sell into movies. We even have movies that are based on songs or MV’s ( Chi Zi Hua Kai and My Ol’ Classmate). China’s had a number of hugely successful variety shows in the past couple of years, and so they all tried to bank on it with varying degrees of success. Last year, Super Boys and The Voice also made movies, but they both flopped. I hear Running Man is doing decent so far in the box office.

There are two movie versions of My Sunshine. LeTV version that has already started filming with Yang Mi/Huang Xiaoming, and the Enlight version (although this one doesn’t even have a script yet and Enlight only brought the rights in November).

I don’t really know what went on, but it sounded like based on the statements from the three parties that Enlight didn’t know that LeTV was going to submit the film proposal a month before their contract ended, so Enlight had planned for their version to be the only version. My guess is that LeTV didn’t think Gu Man would be so quick about reselling the rights, and probably had hoped that once their proposal was approved (i.e. no one else can’t make any film of the same name in three years), Gu Man wouldn’t be able to sell it to anyone else. Little did they know that Gu Man had already made a deal, and that LeTV’s announcement was too late to stop any new deals. There’s a chance that Enlight may never make the film depending on how the LeTV version does.

I feel as if Da Hai has been in the works for a really, really long time now…
But B&T only signed up with Studio Mir—the Korean animation house that did Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra—in May last year. And Studio Mir is doing most of the main production.
So the government spends millions of dollars on boosting the local animation industry, and instead the studio just uses the money to outsource production. = _ =

Oh well. I’m still looking forward to it. It would be a big step forward for the local industry.

That’s unfortunate. I know they tried to crowdfund it in 2013, do you know if the money of the crowd funding went to Korea? Because I feel like people would not be happy about that…
It’s really frustrating because from what I read from I think Zhang Yimou, working with Korean tech teams are the least beneficial because they are more protective and won’t let the home production work with them and learn. Except all the newer Korean drama and variety coproduction come with requirements to use Korean production teams, which is pretty terrible for the Chinese side in terms of development.

I really don’t understand all this urge from chinese to co-work with koreans nowadays. Sometimes it even pisses me a lot. I mean I don’t find Korean drama, movies or animations something outstanding. If chinese want to learn something for movie/animation industries I would say go for american and japanese instead
and learn from the best.

I understand it in some parts, but when a reality show is using a Korean team to do it’s music and sound effects, that’s just weird because a lot of music is used for humor, and humor does not translate well. Or if they’re getting a Korean director to film a Three Kingdoms drama…

I want to say that it was Zhang Yimou who was talking about he prefers to use American teams because they are willing to let Chinese teams work alongside them.

I got it mixed up. The Ancient Sword team is doing a Korean-collab adaptation of Fengshen Bang with a Korean director, and Lin Gengxin/SNSD’s Yoona/Kim Jeong Hoon are starring in a Three Kingdoms drama that’s a Korean collaboration… Lin Gengxin plays Zhao Yun.

In terms of traditional animation, the Korean industry is probably the best in the world. On budgets that most Chinese productions can afford, at least (it is a bit different when you’re on nine-figure, Disney budget).

But the entire Da Hai project is flawed, I think. It started out as a Flash animation for the guy while he was in college, and he’s been working on it ever since, with no movie-making experience. It’s become too much of his baby. They need to hire an experienced, objective producer to oversee it. But there isn’t anyone with that experience in animation in China. So, yeah, it certainly wouldn’t be a bad idea to hire some talent from Japan in this case.

Also why are there two versions of My Sunshine? I thought you could only sell copyright once, at least if I was the buying side I would put in a clause to state that for the same medium you need to sell it exclusively.

It was kind of a mess… My understanding is that LeTV had the rights until November, and managed to pass it through SARFT by October and begun filming this month. Gu Man, however, sold the new rights to Enlight …

Well it depends on wich kind of chinese animations are you interested. Chineses produce tons of animations per year but just a very tiny part of it worth to watch.
The most successful 3D animations are:
秦时明月 aka the legend of Qin. The fifth season is broadcasting now. One episode per month.
纳米核心 aka Nanocore. Six episodes are out. It’s from CAS studio. These guys have a lot of potential. They are working also one 苍龙暗影 aka The sign of dragon. The teaser is really wow!
画江湖之不良人Technically speaking is just average but the story is really good specially if you like the Wuxia genre.
龙之谷 aka the dragon nest. It’s a 3D movie of a korean MMORPG franchise I believe…
As for 2D’s animations there’re mostly funded by internet channel like QQ, Bilibili, Acfun, U17 etc…
I’ll suggest (mostly are in Japanese Anime style):
橹时代 aka Lu’s time. It’s really well animated from the second ep).
王牌御史
端腦
十万个冷笑话 aka Ten thousand bad jokes. It’s really funny.
妖怪名单
昨日青空 it’s just a PV for now but it seems will become a movie soon. It’s from Seven Stones a studio that have released a lot of good PV’s but none of them have become a full work actually. So….
Batman in Shanghai a short from a team called Wolf smoke. Really oustanding. I suggest you to watch also other works in their YT Channel.
魁拔 trilogy movie from Vasoon.

I think the greatest problem for the chinese animation industry is the lack of funds.

Thanks for all this! Do you have a link to 苍龙暗影’s teaser? I tried googling it and couldn’t find anything. I like CAS’ animation a lot, but the Nanocore plot is still all over the place …
I believe Enlight also picked up 昨日青空, so hopefully they’ll do something with it.

well… you couldn’t find anything because I wrote the chinese name wrong *facepalm, sorry. The correct name is 龙吟沧海. Here’s the link for the teaser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LPVdWaYg58
The animation is even better than Nanocore.